The sounds in the barn filled Nien’s senses: Wing’s deep breathing, the brief snorts from the plow team, the creak of the wood beneath the hooves of the horses. The white face of the silver filly hung over the door of her stall, her big long-lashed eyelids closed, snoring lightly, her shoulder still dark with Wing’s blood.
The only one that seemed to be awake was Jhei, the family milk cow. She raised her broad face and blinked at Nien.
Nien’s mouth tipped a little. He raised a hand and wiggled his fingers at her.
The cow flared her nostrils, backing away, knocking her bony rump up against the back of the stall. She was their best milk cow. She also had the worst attitude. Jhei loved to tipping things over, eating the other cows’ spoils while ignoring her own, and would frequently figure out both the stall latch as well as the barn doors, flipping their latches open with her nose or hooking them with a horn, in order to take free walks about the farm. It was because she was still in possession of a full set of horns that she was not only able to do those things but was like that. She had gone too long and was beyond dehorning by the time they’d gotten her. No wonder she’d been a quick-sell from a family in the Village. Jhei acted half cow, half bull, unable to make up her mind, embodying the verve and fiestiness of both. Carly called her Horny. Jake agreed that was a better name than Jhei.
“Not excited about cold fingers on warm teats, eh?” Nien chuckled softly. “Come on, big girl.”
Nien took up the milk bucket and released the latch on the stall. With a pail of brevec oats, Jhei would change her mind.
Nien slapped his hands together and rubbed, creating some warmth in friction before taking up the milking stool and settling in as Jhei buried her whiskered muzzle into the oat pail.
As his strong hands worked the teats with a practiced, easy stroke, he felt how much yesterday’s events had affected him as well, not just emotionally but physically. He was stiff in shoulder and back. He breathed and focused on his hands and the spit-spat of milk into the pail for a time before glancing over again at Wing, his brother’s dark head languid against one of the peeiopi baskets.
“Take what time you can,” he said quietly to Wing as he slept. “Another day is right around the corner.”
The milk bucket near full, Nien slid the milking stool back and stood, grunting and rubbing his back.
Stepping outside and closing the barn doors quietly, he gathered a few eggs from under the sleepy peeiopi’s, and returned to the house with the eggs and the milk bucket. Reean and Joash were up then, moving about in the early morning quiet.
“Thanks,” Joash said, nodding at the milk pail.
“No problem.” Nien lowered himself onto the divan.
“Wing still sleeping?” Reean asked, stoking the fire in the big black cooking stove.
“Sure is,” Nien said. “In the barn.”
Reean looked over her shoulder. “The barn?”
Nien shrugged, and the family shared a familiar fall of glances. Would there ever be a time when they weren’t worried for Wing?
After yesterday’s news, would there ever be a time when they weren’t worried for themselves or their people?
Chapter 10
Legran
“Y ou’re going to get yourself killed.”
Master Monteray glanced down at his wife where she stood twenty steps below him.
“And that thing,” she said. “That contraption. Are you sure it won’t slip or break or something?”
“It hasn’t yet,” Monteray replied, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. The large wooden ladder creaked beneath the weight.
Kate gasped.
Monteray laughed. “It’s fine, dear.”
Kate grumbled. “I don’t understand why you started to undertake this now when the house isn’t yet finished.”
“The house is finished,” Monteray said for what felt like the thousandth time. “I’ll get back to the addition once I’ve finished up with the Mietan here.”
Revolutions past when they’d first purchased the land whereon their “unfinished” home now sat, Monteray had quickly thrown up a small cabin near the riverbank. The property was a fair stretch of fertile, grassy land flanking the Lennata River where the sunsetting end of the small Valley of Legran met the rising slopes of the Anrak-Ti mountain range. Their daughter, Tei, spent her baby revolutions in the cabin by the river while Monteray began to build the home of their dreams and Kate taught Tei how to swim. The small family moved out of the cabin and into the house just before Tei’s tenth birthday. Tei was now nearly twenty and the addition to the house Monteray had started a couple revolutions back had been put on hold while he worked on the Mietan — a special project he’d had in mind from the beginning.
Kate looked up as Monteray looked down at her and sighed. “It’s close, Kate, and then I’ll get back to the house.”
She looked unconvinced.
“I’ve always wanted one — you know that. And, well, I need to build it now.”
Pushing her dark brown hair away from her face, Monteray felt his wife studying him and saw that she understood now. He was given to premonitions and the building of the Mietan was one of them. Kate had always taken his premonitions in stride, neither trusting in them entirely, and yet, to her credit, not discounting them either. After being away from Legran for revolutions, Monteray had returned and, on the night of his arrival had met Kate at a dinner hosted by his sister. They’d left together that night and were married two short turns later. It wasn’t until after they were wed that he’d told her she was the reason he’d returned after his long absence. He’d also known that their first and only child would be a girl. Tei seemed to relish being an only child.
“Then you should at least have some help,” Kate persisted.
“I will. Jason is coming out. I believe he got back from Quieness last night.”
“Well, that’s something. I’ll make enough lunch for four.”
“Very good,” Monteray replied, turning back to his work.
Kate had barely disappeared into the house when Monteray heard another voice calling up to him, “You’re the best architect in the valley!”
Monteray returned to the long ladder and, glancing over the edge of the roof, saw his sister’s oldest son, Jason, standing at the foot of the ladder. “I am the only architect in the valley,” he replied.
The young man laughed, his thick dark brown hair waving over his face.
Monteray grinned at his oldest nephew. “How was the trip to Quieness?”
“Long,” Jason said. “I’m glad to be home.”
“I bet. And SiQQiy?”
“Remarkable, as always.” His nephew’s face sobered. But, well, there is news.”
Monteray nodded, a wave of solemnity moving through him. It was then he noticed a willowy shadow standing behind Jason. “Call? How are you?”
“Uncle.”
Not nearly so handsome as his older brother, Call’s clear blue eyes revealed a ready intellect that belied the ungainliness of his body.
“You ready to do some work?” Monteray asked Jason.
“Absolutely,” Jason replied. “Just tell me where to start.”
Monteray hadn’t considered Call until he saw his young nephew staring up at him. He contained a sigh. He knew he’d ask Jason to come to the top, but what was he to do with Call? Jason was an athletic, physically capable individual, whereas the only coordinated muscle in his little brother’s body was the large grey one between his ears, and even that worked a little...oddly.
“Jason, I’ll need you up here.”
Call continued to look up through a stray lock of blond hair, awaiting his own assignment.
Monteray said, “I tire of retreating down this ladder to retrieve the tools I need — would you kindly?”
“Sure.”
“Use this to send them up to me,” Monteray said, indicating a bucket on a rope, rigged with a pulley.
Call nodded as Jason made his way quic
kly up the ladder and proceeded across the roof. Monteray gave a few quick instructions to Jason before glancing back over the edge of the roof happy to have Call on the ground — he needed a new set of fasteners. He called down as much to Call.
Call glanced around at the seemingly endless array of tools and equipment lying in chests and on the ground. “Uh,” he stammered. “What?”
Monteray squinted, trying to find the box he’d placed the fasteners in. “That one,” he said, pointing.
Fumbling around through two large chests, Call finally came up with the right box. Placing it in the bucket, he pulled hand over hand and sent it up.
Monteray took it, and returned across the roof to Jason.
“Uncle, you have any water up here?” Jason asked.
“Oh, yes. I brought some out, must have left the skin...” Turning back, Monteray was about to ask Call if he could see a bota bag of water lying around anywhere, only to find his young nephew missing. He looked back at Jason. “Where’d he go?”
Jason shrugged. “He does that all the time. Mother usually sends me into town to find him.”
“You think he took off, just now, for town?”
“That’s where I always find him. Hanging around the bars and merchant shops, writing.”
“Why does he do that?”
Jason shrugged. “He’s curious I guess.”
“Curious?”
“In the people.” Jason paused, and the look in his eye suggested that he was wondering how he might explain his little brothers’ oddities. Monteray sympathized with Jason’s trouble.
Jason continued: “He’s a fairly good writer, actually. Not sure how much of what he writes is true or not but it’s…entertaining.” Jason shrugged and tried to smile. “I doubt that’s where he’s gone now, though.”
Monteray frowned. “Well, it looks like back down the ladder I go.”
No sooner had Monteray set a foot to the green grass than Call appeared at his side, book in hand, saying, “Now, we can get to work.”
Monteray recognized the book — a ‘how-to’ on carpentry. The cover was worn, the binding half torn. It was the first manual he had ever perused on the subject.
Without asking, Monteray simply raised his eyebrows in question.
“I don’t know these tools,” Call explained. “This way you tell me the name of the one you want and I will find it here” — he raised the book — “and then find it somewhere there,” he said, waving his hand across what, Monteray realized, must have looked like a dismaying tangle of implements to his young nephew.
Monteray laughed and shook his head. “That will do,” he replied, and slinging the errant bota bag of water over his shoulder, was about to proceed back up the ladder when Call stopped him.
“Uncle?” Monteray glanced back over his shoulder. Call fidgeted. “Jason said, well, he said that there have been attacks on ships in Quieness, by the Ka’ull. Do you think they’ll come here?”
From above, Monteray heard: “Thanks a lot, little brother, you know I was meant to tell Uncle that information first.”
Call turned pink.
But Monteray didn’t necessarily mind. “I don’t know, Call, that’s why I’m communicating with the other valleys.”
Call continued to look at him and Monteray wondered what else his youngest nephew might be wanting to know. “Anything else?” he asked.
“The townspeople are talking. A trader came through — he said another trader said that an old partner of his was up around the Inlet and saw a lot of Ka’ull ships. More than he thought the Ka’ull had the resources to build.”
“We’re looking into it,” Monteray replied. Call nodded, still waiting. “Is that all?”
“Jason isn’t that much older than me, I mean if you need to send another messenger…?”
Monteray took Call’s meaning. “I’ll think about it,” he replied not saying what he really thought, that not only was Call too young but Monteray didn’t feel he could count on Call to simply go, deliver his message, and return without becoming distracted by, well, anything really: He’d seen the boy become lost in a book for hours, and once, when he’d sent him into town on a simple errand, Call had not returned for half the day saying only that he’d heard a local in conversation with a trader relating a story about a jarra bear and a can of fish and decided to write it all down.
Call’s eyes shifted nervously and then he finally looked away. “I’ll get to know these tools,” he said.
“Thank you,” Monteray replied, and climbed the ladder once more.
He’d been receiving reports of rumours circulating in town — rumours of rumours of rumours. He found it frustrating. But Lou had been taken. That much they knew certainly.
Monteray reached the roof and glanced up at the sky. Out there was his friend, Commander Lant. Out there was SiQQiy, an Empress who was as a daughter to him. Out there were the Ka’ull. Moving. But where to now? How far would they go? And what, if anything, could he do about it?
“All right, Jason,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me what SiQQiy had to say.”
Chapter 11
The Mesko Table
B usy turns had passed before Wing and Joash found themselves standing at the base of an immense Mesko tree. A quandary of biological contradictions, the Mesko grew only in a small section of the Ti Range on the entire continent: Rieeve’s sunrising border. And it wasn’t only the massive size of the trees or the peculiarity of the climate, but that within their giant cones were held not hundreds, but only one seed each, one seed of smaller size than those of the teeana that Wing planted in the family’s fields.
Over four hundred and fifty revolutions past the forest had all but died out. For many revolutions Rieevans studied the forest, attempting to discover the cause. From fire to the delicate balance of soil, desiccation and moisture levels, availability of wind dissemination, to insect predation and creature dispersal, it seemed they’d run out of ideas. In the end, however, they found the simplest answer proved to be the right one: Only saplings receiving direct sunlight survived.
Like most trees, the Mesko competed for sunlight, growing on a northing sunset-facing ridge of the Ti Range. At this aspect moisture levels and sunlight were perfect for them. Nevertheless, beneath the great canopy of the adults, very few saplings could survive and more of the great trees died every revolution than were able to make it into adolescence.
For a time, their people had tried replanting the saplings, but none survived the relocation. So, they’d set to cutting down a few of the giants.
The revolutions had proved the efficacy of this method, and now, though still small, the forest was flourishing once again.
Briefly, Joash laid his hand against the trunk of the great tree beneath which they stood and spoke its name: “Me’lont.”
Me’lont was an ancient in the forest. Joash knew Wing and Nien had spent many an afternoon beneath the shady reaches of its vast width and ever-reaching branches, waiting for Joash to complete his rounds, checking on saplings, gathering information both intuitively and experientially on which ones had the best chance to achieve adulthood, and therefore, which ones of the Ancients had to go.
“So, you’ve decided,” Wing said.
“Yes,” Joash replied, assessing the tree he and Wing would be taking down.
Looking up at the massive branches, Joash turned a tight circle. Me’lont’s great arms had birthed numerous saplings, but those same arms had also spelled death for all of them.
Joash walked slowly about the great tree. Beneath its addition to the Mesko canopy were three saplings. One was already beyond saving, but two were proving strong enough to live in two pale streams of light that reached them by the grace of a fallen limb from a neighboring tree.
Though it saddened Joash to fell a tree he had come to know as a friend, the Rieevans had the preservation and working of the Mesko down to a fine art. As indispensable as Rieevan crops and flocks, the Mesko provided wood for homes and furniture
, the bark for thatching the roofs of poorer homes, barns, stables and local business shops as well as padding for floors and the making of rope. Most importantly, the Mesko was used to make paper for transcriptions of the Ancient Writings.
Joash smiled to himself as he gazed upwards. “Me’lont long ago passed from grandfather to ancient.” The lines in his face deepened. “But he has agreed. He is ready to go on to be something else. Give these youngsters a chance.”
Wing stood silently, listening as he usually did, allowing Joash to make his assessments.
“Look,” Joash said. “Many of its roots have died. He is already passing.” Joash glanced around. “We’ll need to watch the fall. There’s a break here in the saplings,” he said pointing. “And we’ll have to cut those large branches beforehand.”
Wing nodded — he’d be doing the climbing to make the cuts.
“Me’lont,” Joash said, gazing up through the great tree’s wooden arms. “You alone will keep us busy halfway through next Kojko.”
“What do you think about using the split logs from the Vanc home for a new dining room table?” Wing said.
“Fine idea,” Joash replied.
“Mother will be surprised,” Wing said. “I want to do it.”
“Good enough, it’s all yours.”
The Rieevans took great pride in their carpentry skills, and truly, few were better. Work with the wood of the Mesko took a special skill all its own. Having been taught the art from his father, it was known in the Village that Wing and Nien had learned from one of the best builders Rieeve had ever known.
With the nonchalance of one who has done a dangerous thing since they were young, Joash watched Wing as his son tucked the long hand saw into a leather strap at his back and began to climb. The deep rivers in the bark of the old tree provided ample hand holds and these Wing used, like climbing a cliff wall, until he could get to the first of the lower branches. He did this without thought, his body moving on a memory all its own, and made it with disgusting ease to the first set of branches. Barely breathing from the exertion, Wing swung up over the branch and stood upon it straight, as comfortable as if he were simply climbing over a fence.
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